When I was a boy, my father gave me a few bits of advice to heed if I wanted others to trust and respect me: follow through on your promises. Don't rush to judgment. Match your words to your actions and your actions to your words. Show others the respect you'd like to receive. Treat your word as a sacred bond. Apparently Daddy was a smidge too circumspect, because Sandy Allgeier has spun those concise, durable little sayings into a full-length book that investigates Daddy's advice in truly exhausting detail.



Allgier takes the truths I'd like to think most of us grew up with and extrapolates from them three "secrets," seven "steps," and so many fortune cookie bromides that I lost count. Now I know that the tech stock bubble, Enron meltdown, and subprime mortgage crisis prove that not everyone listened to their parents as religiously as I did. But Allgeier says nothing between these covers that Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and generations of business book writers haven't already said at great length. It got to where, with each new page, I prayed for just one idea or piece of information I hadn't already heard. And with each finished page my prayers went unanswered.



Don't misunderstand me. I agree with all of Allgeier's points, and in the unlikely event that you haven't already heard these pointers from your parents, teachers, mentors, friends, bosses, Scout masters, random strangers, or thousands of prior business books, she expresses them well. But when I invest my finite time and effort into a book, I expect the author to respect me enough to tell me something I don't already know.